Agenda Items

Announcements

Introduction and Names

Treasurer's Report

If you made a donation in 2009 and want a receipt for tax purposes, send an email to treasurer@noisebridge.net with your full name, mailing address, the item or amount donated (and if money, the method), and the date of the donation.

Amount in bank: $15k

There are 5 members who are three or more months late.
Separate from them:

Number of members in good standing: 77

Number of members late for December: 11

Number of members late for January: 65

If all late dues were paid in full, at $40 each, we would have $4,880.

Very brief primer on Noisebridge consensus process

There is a consensus process... Only do something if all members are comfortable with it.

Membership binder

Ozzy's introduction: "He likes making shit. He likes being around people who make shit. He also likes unmaking stuff." Ozzy shall become a member. Nobody disagrees.

People who join Noisebridge are either idiots or really brave.

What's Going On at Noisebridge

If you bought something and then gave it to Noisebridge (for a project, or 'cause you're awesome) it might be a donation in kind. Talk to the treasurer.

One short sentence about each of the following:

Mail Call

Check the table and cork-board near the north stairwell door for new mail from other hacker spaces and exhackpats around the world.

Weekly

Python Mondays (6:30 PM, 2169): Python hasn't happened for a long time. It didn't happen yesterday and tt wasn't posted. Somebody was here who was skilled enough to facilitate the Python class but didn't happen. Should we change the Wiki to indicate it's not a regular event? Nya, we should be more consistent.

Project Euler now on Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m: It's a project for solving mathematical problems using computational problems. Didn't happen today because the person who leads it wasn't around. Attendance is down (hearsay). Should it continue? Somebody should ping Seth (Zeth?).

SCoW craft group - Wednesdays at 7PM: If you want to do something of crafts or sewing thing, show up on Wednesdays and people will help you. A week from tomorrow there's a large event happenning.

GameDevelopment - Wednesdays at 8PM, back from Berlin and 2010 class is in session

Shop Friday still plans to come back when the shop is done: cleaning and organizing the shop. Pretty close to being there. Just a general space for people to build stuff or get information on how to build stuff with workshops. This Friday there will be a C&C workshop. One of the things that there was a discussion about putting LED lighting fixtures in the space. If anybody is interested in that talk to John.

Sensebridge and the EEG group - Sundays at afternoonish (1-2ish) - come to try brain scanning. The EEG meeting has been actually metting regularly and doing stuff and we got data from (?). Next thing to do is share data so people can crunch it. Another potential donation: somebody wants to donate a 10-channel EEG machine form the 80s. If it works at all, we will use it. If not, we will take it apart. Mailing list announcement to come. There was a wearable workshop and the hardware is awesome. Conductive threads! Tiny little widgets! Thy're trying to make a heartrate monitor.

Spacebridge - Sundays at 5PM planning meeting this Sunday to decide on payload budget on. Longterm goal: put something into orbit. Colonize the high atmosphere. Have regularly scheduled baloon launches. Short-term goal: take something up there and down safely. Use Adruino, Android, gliders. We're approximately meeting on Sundays. Deadline for first launch: early February 2010. Where will we launch from? Lots of ideas. There's size limits for payloads but everyone interested should discuss afterwards.

Project Updates

CNC Mill workshop on Friday CNC_Mill_Workshop: He's gonna do a workshop at 6pm. Focus on making circuit boards.

2169 Mission

help needed for work on the bathroom. talk to scott about getting the pipe laid for the bathroom/darkroom. The sewer pipe is done for the bathroom. Anyone who wants to learn about the wonderful and complex world of plumbing, should talk to scott.

Some folks were talking about making a wind generator for some of the lights.

Darkroom: ventilation. coordinating with scott about the bahtroom. the ventilation for the darkroom and the restroom will be completely seperate because there should be no cross-contamination and it's hard to gurantee it otherwise.

Noisecloud

Noisebridge now has server power available. To find out more about the server access, ask Dr. Jesus.
We have machines. we have so many machines. they have more computers than we know what to make. there is a big stack in redwood city. if you need a server, or if you know of a non-profit that needs servers, let Dr. Jesus know.

26C3 debrief

Due to kernel upgrades, projector can't be driven. But we got cool visual effects. Soon, soon. In the long traition of demos <X> will give a short description. About 20 folks from Noisebridge went to Berlin to attend 26C3 (Chaos Communicatoin Congress). There were 3k~4k people in a conference center hacking madly for 4 days straight. It was intense, cool, and awesome. Many talks--including a number that made the frontpage of NYT. If <X>'s computer hasn't crashed we'd see a cool video. It's also on pony.

This weekend or next weekend there will be a discussion about it.

Random

Talk after the formal meeting about a way to manage the checking out of cameras and other equipment.
Someone donated a DV camera, silently. There's also a computer donated.

Discussion items

Randomized Logo

Shall we randomize the logo displayed on the Noisebridge Wiki (our primary website) rather than continuing in the general theme of the readily identifiable logo we've been using to date?

At least two people disagree. On the mailing list, somebody posted an explanation of why the current code isn't a good randomizing function. Harmless but unfortunate code. The logo appeared on the glassdoors downstairs, but we don't rent these glassdoors--don't do stuff like that without talking to the landlord. The logo that appeared was the Weather underground + keyboard logo. Ask the landlord for the logo that's already there.

Significant dissent voice for the randomized logo.

The discussion hasn't coalesced around a set of things we can consent on. The original idea of Noisebridge wasn't that we will have this sign that we will stand for. The logo was uploaded in 2007. The logo was never consented on. Obviously we do have a logo. 10K hanging out around the world. We don't have to have a logo if we don't want to. We can have more than one logo. Other groups have more than one logo (such as C3). "Let a 1000 logos bloom".

What's the process for putting up logos we like, and what's the process for putting logos we don't like.

What about having a consensus process for logos? Put 'em in a pool, similar to membership process.

Some people were offended by a logo because of similarity to other groups. Furthermore, the new logo was done without any kind of consensus. Some people have special permissions and the might use it to do something other people didn't consent with.

Stick with the same logo we had a week ago (the logo we've had for a while). Allow people to make new logos and if they become popular people can consent. However, the discussion was created because of the new logo. People can make whatever edit they want to. At a later point somebody can open up a discussion about changing the logos.

Allowing multiple logos all the time could be a drama-engine.

It's interesting that we're having the same kind of themes whenever we have the do-cracy/consent-cracy debate.

Made an offer for a one-year registration of an anonymous space that could be used as a playground

If so:

=How do we want to handle the NB logo on the wiki?

Notes from mailing list discussion

Randomizer function

Need better randomizer function

Possible wiki configurations:

Status quo (orig black and red circuit-like logo on all pages)

Randomizer from pool on all pages

Randomizer from pool on all internal pages, orig logo on index

Some other variant of mixed logos, may require someone committing to code up the implementation

Possible pool handling

Public

Public upload somewhere, added to pool by ops

Public upload somewhere, some other approval method

Noisebridge and Wikileaks - 501(c)(3) Fiscal Sponsorship

Wikileaks has very little presence in the United States. If they were to be able to take donations as a charitable organization, they would be able to generate a great deal more in donations from US donors.

The benefit to Noisebridge would be financial, as well as supporting a good cause. It is customary in these relationships that the sponsoring organization keep 10% of all donations. This would be a contractual arrangement which we would need our lawyers to draw up.

It is common arrangement in the art community that organizations that have a charitable designation "sponsor" organizations that are either too small or unable to manage the issues themselves. The Oakland Opera is a fiscal sponsor for NIMBY, SOMArts is a fiscal sponsor for the Flaming Lotus Girls. NIMBY is an interesting case, as they've faced all sorts of persecution, yet the Oakland Opera has seen none of it.

Without making any commitments, does it seem like this is something the membership thinks would be a good idea to pursue with our lawyers?

Discussion

Pending lawyers' approval, why not?
Should use a tax lawyer.
General discussion about associating with another organization.
A lot of general support. No immediate or loud objections.
Would this add a lot of work to the treasurer? Should another position be created, or outsource?

Bay Area Community Exchange needing space

We don't typically approve events one-by-one unless there's an actual issue. A member needs to sponsor the meetings to use the space. Although it's not a rule, it's the precedent.

Noisebridge could benefit by getting Timebanks credit in exchange for using the space.

Not great idea to come on Tuesday nights.

More deets on how to have events in Noisebridge without having it blow up in your face will be given in person.

Mira has expressed interest in using one of the classrooms for meetings (usually also on Tuesdays, so we can all hang out after our respective meetings and learn more about each other) of the bay area community exchange http://www.bace.org & has mentioned perhaps Noisebridge might want to create an account with http://www.timebanks.org to see about making improvements to noisebridge & we can help others with whatever sorts of geeky projects they might be interested in (as we already do :).